Page 108 of Castle

We all have skeletons in our closets. Some keep them hidden under their beds. I have mine too. I kept them locked in a chest which was buried deep where no one else can find it.

My son and I were sitting in our private theater, watching one of my old tapes. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he pointed a finger at my father, who was young in the tape.

“Daddy!” He said, pointing at the screen.

I laughed, “That’s your late grandfather, buddy.” I showed him the thirteen-year-old me. “And that’s me.”

Millie didn’t know about these tapes, and I hadn’t shown them to her for good reason. They weren’t meant to be shown to my wife.

You’ll find out the reason pretty soon.

The birthday song played on the videotape on the wide screen. Devin stood in the center, cutting the cake. He was wearing some fancy designer outfit shipped from Venice. Dayana was on the side. They were laughing, their friends clapping for them.

I stood on the other side looking gangly with some loose clothes on. I was a little skinny then, and Theo was in my arms, staring wide-eyed at the towering cake and the lavish birthday party.

That was the first time Aster Montgomery noticed us and took pity on us.

Theo and I were born to Lorna and Christopher Gates, but of course, Aster didn’t know that. She thought we were kids to a single mother at first. Devin and Dayana were heirs to this billion-dollar conglomerate.

I wasn’t born a Montgomery.

I stole the name.

Which was only possible because of years of patience, planning, and perseverance.

Father loved both the women. Was that his crime? I think so. He chose the rich woman over my mother, even though he was married to my mom first.

Aster fed Theo and me, she clothed us, gave us a roof over our heads, and finally we were adopted.

The journals were fake. There were no journals written by Aster or Lorna.

Theo wrote them in a similar hand to get Millie on our side, and I guess he’d succeeded. He’d woven a new story where he and I were born into the Montgomery family. The facts were the same, only some things were different.

Aster was a home-wrecker. She destroyed my family, so I took everything from her, including her house and wealth.

Chris and Lorna were only working on this property when the entitled Aster Montgomery seduced my father and stole him from us. He remarried her with the condition that Theo and I were included in the family. Aster accepted us with open arms despite the dislike Daya and Devin showed to us at first.

And then she got jealous of my mother because Dad would always find a way to go to Lorna.

The contents in the diary weren’t exactly all lies, but everything was written and presented in a way that wasn’t real. My mother left us at a very tender age exactly the way it was written in the diary, only it wasn’t Aster, it was Lorna, and I refused to believe she had just left.

I could hear some strange sounds at night when I passed the cellar. I wanted to find out the source of the sound.

I knew something fishy was going on down there.

One night when everyone was in bed, thinking it was a burglar sneaking into the house, I snagged my baseball bat and went downstairs to investigate.

I flicked the keys from my father’s room and went downstairs. The cellar was quiet that night. A small trap-door could be seen at the foot of the stairs. I had to use all my strength to open it.

A foul odor entered my nostrils. It was nasty. I remembered flicking the light on and seeing a small skeleton of a person. The woman was so frail, I couldn’t recognize her to be my mother.

“Mom?” I’d called out to her.

She looked up, but she barely recognized me.

She’d spent years in this cellar with no one’s knowledge.

Her teeth gone, and the place stank of urine.

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